Ten-Word Review

Was I wrong?
For a film repeatedly described as zany and comedic, it was by far the least funny, and least charming, of the Marvel Studios films. Most Marvel films are bright and sugary confections that evaporate from memory once you’ve made it to the car park; but this is the first one where I’ve been actually hoping for it to end soon. There’s a moment about fifteen minutes in when you realise, “Oh dear. This is its sense of humour – this is as funny as it’s going to get.” At the screening I attended, no-one was laughing. An occasional muted titter was about it.

It’s not quite terrible – the retro-80s aesthetic isn’t without its merits – but it’s not a good film. If you imagine a glib, disjointed, largely unfunny parody of a Marvel film with an emphasis on predictable and puerile gags, and in which half the cast are acting out of character, that’s the general area. In case there’s any doubt, I’m not above dumb, puerile humour – I enjoyed Battleship, a trashy film based on a board game. But this was just… flat and grating, and unengaging, and the humour got more grating as it went on. As I said, the film seems to think it’s a comedy, and is pitched as a comedy, but the audience I saw it with weren’t laughing.

If you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve already seen most of the half-decent jokes. With Marvel films, there’s usually a tricky balance of bombastic drama and quipping, and it’s easy to lose that balance and end up with the humour kicking the legs out from under any dramatic tension. Here, the gags are piled high, but they’re much more miss than hit, and very predictable, and so the whole thing gets boring, quite quickly. The best bit, I think, is the all-too-brief Doctor Strange cameo, early on, which did make me laugh. (Strange is determined to get Loki off of Earth as “promptly” as possible, which leads to a neat visual gag about jumping forward in time erratically.) After that, it’s pretty much downhill.

Even the end-credits stinger is perfunctory and flat. I’m genuinely baffled by the film’s 96% Rotten Tomatoes score.

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…by the time I was 11, the “comic books” I was reading in bed, under the covers, by flashlight, was Mad Magazine…
So Mad gave you Horrifying Cliches, but Marvel only offers boring cliches?

Here, lemme try some HTML magic:
American Captain. Mind the “Next” button at bottom right for more.

I think one of the problems is the lack of subtlety or variety. It’s much too predictable, a one-note forced zaniness. Some gags are repeated – big monster has tiny voice – and jokes that might have been sharper if brief or underplayed – Hulk in a hot tub, naked – are just done in an obvious, on-the-nose way, sometimes outstaying their welcome. I haven’t seen Taika Waititi’s other, smaller films, but I gather he’s known for offbeat comedy. Based on this film, he doesn’t seem very good at it.

Freed.

Sounds like the scriptwriters boxed him in into a different role this time.
It’s not a good script, but I suspect the indulgence of improvisation has proved a mixed blessing too. Casting Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster is sort of funny, as an idea, but on film he just meanders about to no great effect, albeit in a very Goldblum-y manner. At least he’s having a good time. There are at most a handful of decent gags, the bulk of which are in the trailers and TV spots – “Hulk like fire,” etc – but the rest is just… lazy and monotonous. And so you end up watching a film that thinks it’s much, much funnier than it actually is.

Pity, as it looked good in the trailer.
It’s a good trailer. But those are the best bits.
The humour is for the most part formulaic and repetitive. A character says something cocky or pompous and a deflating pounding or misfire or pratfall ensues. This is repeated later, and then repeated again, and again. An inter-dimensional portal, into which our heroes have to plunge, turns out to be named The Devil’s Anus and so the name gets mentioned again, and again. This is the joke template of the whole film. And if everything is essentially a set-up for some more rote goofiness, another gag like the one you saw five minutes ago, the stakes and drama ebb away, along with any goodwill, resulting in a film that feels much longer than it actually is.

I’m finding, being an old fart, that my sense of humor sometimes runs counter to the RT scores.
Ten minutes in, it did occur to me that I might be having a sense of humour failure, but I arrived at the cinema in a good mood and I haven’t suddenly gotten sniffy about crass humour. I still appreciate a good fart joke. And again, it wasn’t just me, or The Other Half. The rest of the audience wasn’t shaking with laughter either. As the crowd headed out, there was, I’m pretty sure, a muted atmosphere.

Don’t call me Shirley.
You’re welcome.

David doesn’t like Airplane?
No, that was Chester, who likes movies about gladiators.

Saw it last night. It’s a bit meh.

So, it’s no Deadpool then.

I need explaining about the Gladiator reference. I loathe the film Gladiator with the heat of a thousand suns, but I wasn’t aware it extended to all gladiator films.
And I don’t care how much you like Airplane, or that I am meant to because it is a classic. I don’t like it. Each joke might be OK but I prefer films to have structure. Coherence. Extended skits in such broad humour wear me down.

Like most Zucker Brothers and Mel Brooks films, it’s both extremely topical and you have to have a fair bit of familiarity with the things they’re lampooning.
Airplane!, aside from lampooning all the Airport movies, was also lampooning Zero Hour! the plot of which they stole nearly completely.
Meanwhile, doing it wrong, but way better than ours – Russian feminist protester. [borderline NSFW]

I run an MCU RPG on line, so I’ll probably have to go watch the thing just to keep au courant. Depressing, as this confirms my suspicion from the trailer that it’s aimed at 12-year-old boys.

Suggestions and reactions . . .

No surprise. The entire superhero genre in all formats and in all its history has about 3 ideas. You can throw in as many stars and as much CGI as you like, the result will still be arse-flavoured soup. Sure, you might get the odd good character or film or performance every now and then but mainly you get utter utter guff.
I only watch them on planes when I can’t sleep or forgot my kindle. I am always disappointed.
In my darker moments I see them as a signifier of the decline of Western Civilisation. We can blame Muslims and Marxists, but if you enjoyed Thor: The Dark World, it is your fault too. May God have mercy on your soul.

I’m not at all sure that anyone did.
There was one amusing bit . . .

Jane Foster: [Darcy and Ian appear through a portal while kissing] Darcy!
Darcy Lewis: [She drops Ian] Jane!
Dr. Erik Selvig: Ian!
Ian Boothby: Selvig!
—Mjolnir blurs out of another portal while being summoned by Thor.
Darcy Lewis: Mjolnir!

Free text, MWP’s Marvel Heroic, or Classic TSR MSH?

Purely text-based, no systems/numbers/dice involved. We’re all grown ups (and I run most of the villains), so it’s essentially a shared-writing party rather than a contest.

I work with a really nice Canadian guy, and he loves movies like Airplane! He’s well read and intelligent, but there really does seem to be a different sense of humour in North America. Hence the success of Adam Sandler movies.

I can’t speak for all of North America, or even all of California, but it’s been my experience that there’s no set ‘North American sense of humor.’ I find bits of Airplane amusing, and on the whole it’s less cringe-inducing than most of the raunchy slapstick genre (Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Austin Powers, Benny Hill, Blackadder, etc.). Practically every man or boy I know finds them uproariously funny, though, along with Three Stooges (who just grate on my nerves), so maybe it’s a guy thing.

I’m not at all sure that anyone did.

There was one amusing bit . . .

Not in the amusing category, but I liked trust my rage

… there really does seem to be a different sense of humour in North America.
The apparent popularity of Saturday Night Live is utterly inexplicable.

I’ve often wondered why they don’t get the guys who do the trailers to make the bloody movies. They seem to know what the audience likes.